From scratchy 78s with Bird
announcing sloppy chops
could say as much as tight-ass
technicalities of Clifford Brown;

to long-played Kind of Blue
maintaining silences between the notes
could fill the ear as full
as the cascades of Dizzy’s slippery bop;

or ‘Valentine (my favorite work of heart)
flashing more new smiles
as you got lost to find
another shade of colors;

then Bitches Brew’s new voodoo
leaving everything behind
bedeviling the past with tracks
of new and new and new for miles;

until your only groove was out beyond,
the fuse on which you sparked
a wired electric vision — popping,
rocking with a new age horn;

now leaving us again at sixty-four
I hear the rasp of your bemused,
accusing voice put down, well shit!
it just ain’t hip to live too long.

*First appeared in The Mockingbird

Blues TimXes 2, to Ya by Mike Kohler

1.
Never pass up a chance to listen to the blues.
Maybe it is not to your taste,
or there is no time, or the years
have numbed you to the point
all the songs in life are just background noise.
In the darkest hour of your night,
blues dances up the stairs, waits for you
to open the door.
It has a pint of whiskey, a pack of smokes,
and till sunrise to hear everything you have to say.
Even when you are up and life is good
and you can sleep at night
listen to a blues song.
Go quiet as an empty hallway
waiting for footsteps and a knock,
and know the blues will always be there.

2.
I know it would be cool to admit
to smoking tea, swaying to Coltrane and
Mingus, spacing out,
drinking cheap white wine,
pretending its cool to rebel.
Like that time with Kerouac,
all those other beat catch phrases.
Sorry.
Not my bag.
Put some Cream in my tea,
a Spoonful, no more,
Momma needs a new dress,
I need new shoes,
and when I wake up I know
the Thrill Is Gone.
Jazz is after Midnight,
smoky and tired. Blues is
the walk home, eying shadows,
holding the pistol in your pocket.

[Thanks for the poems, Norb. Gimma a poem, gotta have a poem, i needa poem, oh wait, here’s one. Ya need a poem?]

Jazz Chicago / Bill Jacobs

Plugged Nickel

Hunched down, hunkered down
closed in on the horn, the valves like jewels, the fingers like spiders.
The tight smoky eyelids looking in their own direction
oblivious to whoever is listening.

Who cares. So what.

How can disdain sound so good?

Ode to Joe

The low ceiling all black with spots
highlighting the smoke falling down on the stirring crowd
waiting patiently for the music.

And out comes Joe as if announcing a prizefight speaking of
champions soon to set foot in his ring that he calls the Showcase.

Evans wrote the liner notes on the old vinyl album comparing Miles’ artistry to that of Japanese sumi painters who practice a lifetime the discipline of getting it down right in a single stroke.

Before the recording session forty years ago, Miles made a few sketches concerning what he wanted them to play.
And each man went his own way
–together.
Without exception, said Evans, every piece in the album was recorded in one take.

KIND OF BLUE is the best selling jazz album in the world and still sells 5,000 copies a week. No one can quite explain its popularity.

Except it is something close to perfect…
the beautiful imperfection of jazz.

Be in the dark,
Hear the blue prayer
circling

Broken Wing

Chet tells it in
his auto bio graphy:AS THOUGH I HAD WINGS
(The Lost Memoir)

Tells it as he lived it
once, early on, playing trumpet
in the 6th Army Band…
It’s all about flying
Finding the music
With both feet on the ground.

Tells about that time in the army band,
his second hitch, when the foot soldier musician
had played just about enough grounded omp pa pa
and sought a discharge
like some of his other mad-hatter friends in the band
who had feigned a way to freedom..

“Right about that time two
flute players had managed to get out,” says Chet. “One guy
put himself in a trance & was carried out,
no stretcher,
stiff as a board by two army corpsmen
who jabbed a pin into the bottom of his foot
to no avail.”

The other guy told the band leader:
“There’s a little man inside my flute.
and he’s playing all the wrong notes.”

Both flute players went free, discharged.
While Chet admitted smoking grass,
chimed to shrinks about lack of privacy on the toilet ,
took tests where he always chose
the most feminine answer,
till he couldn’t claim less than life anymore and
went AWOL—a third of the band following suit.
only to turn himself in in time, come clean,
spend three weeks in the stockade and be given a
general discharge,
deemed “unadaptable to Army life”

And so returned and sentenced himself to a life of jazz instead

joining Stan Getz’s band for awhile…
then finally footloose and free…
freeing himself in his own sound:

other Norbert Blei web pages

The coop has flown

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Norbert Blei | 1935 – 2013

On the back roads of Door County again

Norbert Blei – 2012

Photo by Bobbie Krinsky

Norbert Blei – 2012

Photo by Jeffrey Winke

Norbert Blei – 2011

Photo by Sharon Auberle

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